B. Clinton: Americans 'getting the shaft'

WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 (UPI) -- Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said Sunday the Tea Party movement reflects many Americans' feelings that they're "getting the shaft."

"The Tea Party insurrection … reflects the feeling of a lot of Americans that they're getting the shaft. That the people who caused these problems … the banks that were responsible for the financial meltdown, they've gotten well again. And everybody has got money again who is in that business, but ordinary people don't," Clinton said on CBS's "Face The Nation."

Clinton warned that the surging conservative movement is "being bankrolled by people who want to weaken the government so that there will be even more unaccounted for private concentration of power. And that's what got it us in the mess we're in the first place."

Clinton said he believes President Barack Obama was "shocked at the intensity of the Republican opposition" from the onset of his presidency and that it "disoriented him for a while."

"People only hire us (Democrats) when things are messed up. They'd much rather hear the Republican rhetoric than ours. We only get hired when the country is in a mess. So the Democrats should focus on what we're going to do," Clinton said, adding that a Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in November's midterm elections would "increase (Obama's) chances of being re-elected. Whether it would be good for the country or not, I don't know."